“The Wrong Way to Count Prisoners”

Voting rights advocates have been pressing the Census Bureau for more than a decade to stop counting prison inmates as “residents” of prisons — where they typically remain for only a short time — instead of the communities they call home. The bureau, in a rejection of common sense and fairness, has proposed rules for the 2020 census that continue this discredited practice.

Counting inmates this way allows legislators who draw electoral lines to inflate the power of certain areas with “constituents” who have been stripped of the right to vote and have no interaction with the larger community.